Guide
The tomb of Merkez Efendi stands in the garden of the Merkez Efendi Mosque, in the Merkezefendi quarter of Topkapı in Zeytinburnu, İstanbul. It is administered today by the directorate of İstanbul tombs and is open to visitors.
After Merkez Efendi died in 1551, Şah Sultan, daughter of Selim I, had a mosque and a hall for dervish ceremonies added between 1552 and 1572 to what was already a complex belonging to the order. The tomb itself was rebuilt in 1837 by Mahmud II.
The complex once held a mosque, the tomb, a retreat cell, a fountain for ablutions, a kitchen, dervish cells, a royal pavilion and a bath, and some of these have not survived. Near the tomb today stand the Abdülbaki Pasha Library, the bath, the mosque and the Merkezefendi cemetery.
In the entrance part of the tomb, under a wooden ceiling and behind a railing, lie three sheikhs — Hüseyin Efendi, Ahmed Mesud and Mehmed Nureddin — along with Mustafa Efendi and Nurullah Efendi, and three women, Fatma Hatun, Sıdıka Hanım and Hatice Hanım. The coffin of Merkez Efendi himself stands in the domed chamber, with a calligraphic panel by Aziz Efendi before it. Turkish inscriptions on the outer and inner walls record him as a warrior who went to war with Süleyman the Magnificent, a physician, and a scholar of religion and of the mystical path.
What stands today is the building as Mahmud II renewed it; too little is known about how the tomb first looked. As he had it built it was in two rectangular parts, one holding the coffins of the sheikhs of the lodge and their families. In later years the northern wall of the tomb proper was pulled down and the two parts were joined, and a linking section of three arches carried on two columns was put in its place.
The tomb is built of rubble stone and brick and shows Empire style features. It is square in plan, 7.50 by 7.50 metres, with the western face clad in marble. The tomb proper is covered by a dome, plastered on lath inside and leaded outside, while the section added in 1836 has a hipped roof. Three round windows with projecting keystones open on the western face.
The walls of the chamber holding Merkez Efendi are faced up to the skirt of the dome with nineteenth-century European tiles, and the inside of the dome carries a decoration of stars, the writing within it the work of the calligrapher M. Şevket Vahdeti. His coffin is enclosed within wooden railings and worked in mother-of-pearl in the eighteenth-century manner.
